Some of you may recall my answer to the question Am I a MacGregor? was

What’s the point? I am not Scottish, I am Canadian, and I am perfectly happy with that identity.

I still do not have an answer to the MacGregor question (nor have I been looking for one), but I did receive some rather interesting information regarding the past 250 years of Gregory family history thanks to some detective work done by one of my father’s cousins.

It appears that one Phillip Gregory, who was born in Cheshire, England, in 1751 was a member of the British military and arrived in Quebec in 1773. He was eventually given some land near St. Catherine’s, Ontario, on which he settled down with his wife Margaret. The Gregory clan remained in southern Ontario, mostly as farmers, for the next 5 generations (Phillip -> Barnabus -> William -> Richard -> Joseph -> Clarence). My grandfather, Clarence (who went by “Pete”), began as a farmer but later worked in a factory in St. Marys, Ontario, where my father grew up.

In short, I am a 7th-generation Canadian in a family that has lived here since nearly 100 years before Canada was Canada. That’s good enough for me.